Berlin Marathon, History Museum and a Long Ride Home

No wonder there was no vacancies last night at the hotel!  Today happened to be the day of the Berlin Marathon - we managed to see the runners pass by a street about a block away from the hotel.  Afterwards, we decided to go see the Story of Berlin Museum, an interesting interactive museum that traces the turbulent history of Germany's capital from the time it was founded to the present.  After a leisurely morning in Berlin, we headed off to the Central Bus Station to catch a bus from Berlin to London.  Although the bus takes 19 hours to get to London, we figured this was the best choice because the Berlin trip was coming out to be more expensive than we initially anticipated and this was the least expensive option.  Given the reputation of these kind of buses in the US, I was a little worried about what I was getting myself into, but things turned out better than I expected.  There were only about 15 people on the bus so there was plenty of room, the passengers all seemed like friendly budget travelers, and the bus had a bathroom (always a plus on a long ride).  Here's to hoping the bus ride goes well...

Berlin Zoo and... Crap, We Missed Our Flight!

The Berlin Zoo's Oriental Elephant Gate

http://www.bargaintraveleurope.com/07/Germany_Berlin_Zoo.htm

 

Today was supposed to be a nice relaxing day at the Berlin Zoo in the morning and then we were supposed to catch our flight to Paris.  The Berlin Zoo was nice - it houses the world's broadest variety of species and the set up of the Zoo Garden is nice.  The problem is, we had the time of the flight l wrong (had the ticket for a different flight on top) and ended up spending too much time at the zoo and missed our flight!  From there it was a nightmare - trying to figure out how to get back to London (our original plans were to fly from Paris) and where to spend the night (or the next few nights if we could not find a way to get out of Berlin).  We went back to the hotel we were staying at to see if we could stay another night, but they were fully booked.  We asked around several other surrounding hotels, but they happened to be fully booked as well.  We did manage to find a vacancy at Hotel Berlin Berlin - this was a lifesaver.   Now to try and figure out how to get back to London....

Potsdam

The New Palace

Having seen a lot of the can't miss attractions in Berlin, we decided to do a day-trip to nearby Potsdam today.  After a little over an hour on the train, we arrived and set out to explore Potsdam on foot.  We managed to see quite a few interesting sites, with the highlights being the Sanssouci and the New Palace.  This was a lot of walking though - the two palaces are opposite ends of Sanssouci Park, and since there is a clear path to the other palace it looked a lot closer than it actually was! We probably walked over 2 miles just to get to the other palace.  All in all, another good day of sightseeing.